Saturday, March 11, 2017

The Belarusian Nation has Risen Against Lukashenka

Paul
Goble

Staunton, March 11 – The Lukashenka
regime, “like many other post-Soviet authoritarian” systems, rests “not on the
total support of the citizens but rather on their total indifference to what is
taking place in their own country,” an indifference which the Belarusian leader
like Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich in 2013 has violated, Vitaly Portnikov says.

As a result, the Ukrainian analyst
says, those who have come out into the streets of Minsk, Homel, Mohylev, and
Vitebsk are “not the usual Belarusian opposition,” but rather the Belarusian
people who “had never been especially interested in politics” and viewed
Lukashenka and his regime as something to be endured (graniru.org/opinion/portnikov/m.259359.html).

Now, because of
Lukashenka’s desperation to find money for his regime given that Moscow is no
longer supplying it and no one else is likely to, the Belarusian dictator has
awakened the population from its lethargy. And as was the case in Ukraine four
years ago, it is the people in the form of a nation rather than the opposition that is now in a
position to make history.

Neither Lukashenka nor most
commentators appear alive to this possibility preferring instead to focus on
elites, either within the country or abroad, and dismissing the possibility
that ordinary Belarusians are now the prime movers in this drama.

Thus, Lukashenka has moved to arrest
and otherwise harass his more well-known political opponents, and many analysts
have focused on the role that Russian agents – or more rarely Ukrainians or the
West – may be playing.There is just
enough evidence of such activity that it seems plausible to many, especially
given the dismissive attitude to Belarusians.

But each weekend is bringing fresh
evidence that none of these supposed organizers is playing the role many have
expected or assumed is necessary given the remarkable passivity of the
Belarusian population in the past – and even more compelling evidence that the
Belarusian people have now entered history as actors.

Slow to anger and cautious in accepting
anyone from the outside of their local communities as a leader, the Belarusian
people like the Ukrainians at the time of the Maidan are taking their fate into
their own hands.One can only admire
this genuine popular rising and hope it will quickly be successful against a
brutal and increasingly out-of-touch dictator.

And one can also hope for something
else: a recognition by Russians and people in the West that the Belarusians are
not the backward and passive people outsiders portray them as being and instead
more committed to the values of democracy and popular rule that others talk a
lot about but don’t always practice.